


Machine Learning

by karanguni



Category: Hikaru no Go
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-09
Updated: 2014-07-09
Packaged: 2018-02-07 05:56:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1887471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karanguni/pseuds/karanguni
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The next day, Touya sat across the goban from the newly-reminted Juudan and said, numbly, 'Ogata-san, Shindou's going to university.'</p>
            </blockquote>





	Machine Learning

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mmmdraco](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mmmdraco/gifts).



After some cajoling, Shindou agreed to go with Isumi and Touya to China on what the Ki-in called an "educational exchange trip." He had his doubts: it sounded a lot more like a "get them out of our hair, please god" trip, since Touya and himself had sort of maybe come to almost physical blows after their elimination match to see who'd challenge for Gosei. Isumi was so clearly meant to be their wise older chaperone that it was laughable.  
  
'It's a great honour to represent your country,' Morishita-sensei admonished Shindou during the last study session before they left. 'The way Japan ranks on the international stage, you should be jumping at any opportunity to learn from others abroad.'  
  
'We're not _that_ bad,' Shindou hedged, even though he had no idea where Japan stood in international rankings. 'Are we?'  
  
'Haven't won a major tournament in about seven years now,' Waya chipped in. 'That's not just the U-21s, either. When Touya-sensei retired, many people said we lost our last real contender.'  
  
'Er,' Shindou said, feeling obscurely guilty for the whole Touya Kouyo/sai/retirement thing. 'Right. China it is.'

 

* * *

  
  
Go in China turned out to be awesome; China itself turned out to be pretty boring. It wasn't the country so much as the events they had to attend; Touya, being his father's son, had a schedule packed full of diplomatic whatevers, and Shindou ended up getting dragged along to half of them. There was a lot of photo-taking, tea, and then more photo-taking, and food.  
  
'Could you at least pretend to be paying attention?' Touya hissed at him when Shindou was caught yawning enormously as a series of camera flashes went off. 'We're here to _represent Japan_.'  
  
'We haven't played a game of Go all day,' Shindou whined, tugging at his ill-fitting suit. 'How am I supposed to pretend to be interested in anything?'  
  
Isumi, clearly smelling trouble, helpfully suggested that they hit up some of his old friends. 'Le Ping and Yang Hai will be glad to play as many games against you as you can play,' he assured Shindou. When the last of the news vultures took their claws out of Touya, they caught a cab to what Shindou supposed was the Chinese version of the Ki-in, where Isumi spoke a lot of Mandarin and people ushered them — thank god — into a real practice rooms where there were real gobans on which real matches were being played.

' _Finally_!' Shindou said, collapsing into a chair with undisguised relief. He promptly removed his tie and stuffed it into a pocket. Touya folded himself neatly into place at the table next to him, and Isumi went to make the necessary arrangements. Happily, Shindou played a perfectly competent match against some guy that looked like a photocopy of Waya, and then pantomimed his way through a post-game discussion which involved a lot of flailing and much repositioning of stones. He felt a lot better after that, and therefore magnanimous enough to allow Isumi to make proper introductions.  
  
'This is Yang Hai,' Isumi said, gesturing at a tallish guy about his own age who spoke passably good Japanese alongside a bazillion other languages. 'He plays on the Beijing team alongside Touya-sensei,' Isumi went on, which caught Shindou's interest immediately.  
  
'I've had the good luck of playing with your father once,' Yang Hai was saying to Touya. 'We're very fortunate to have him on the team.'  
  
'My father's Go has changed for the better since he started playing in China,' Touya responded politely. 'He's adopted many new strategies.'  
  
'He's being modest,' Shindou interjected cheerfully. 'His father's now a monster, and nobody quite knows what to do when they play him any more.' For many reasons, Shindou'd never asked the ex-Meijin for a match himself, but he certainly heard a lot (too much, really) from Morishita-sensei about the new Go of Touya Kouyou.  
  
'Adapting different styles of play is how the Go world is going to advance,' Yang Hai nodded, clearly approving. 'That's the only way we'll ever achieve the Hand of God, if you ask me.'  
  
'The Hand of God, you said?' Shindou said, eyebrows rising.  
  
'Oh boy,' Isumi muttered.  
  
Three hours later and Shindou had just finished hearing the condensed version of Yang Hai's computer Go project. Touya and Isumi both had that glazed over look that polite people wore when they were a million miles away; Yang Hai had a lot to say. But, to his own surprise, Shindou'd sat transfixed by the idea that you could teach a computer not just how to _play_ Go but to play Go with a predictable and logical style, just like you'd teach a person.  
  
'This is awesome,' he informed Yang Hai, a new-found respect for technology in his voice. 'Like, seriously kick-ass. So you're saying that you can kind of basically feed kifu into this thing and it'll learn?'  
  
'Not exactly,' Yang Hai said, struggling to simplify concepts down to something the rest of them could parse. 'You have to programme a basic strategy for it to follow at first; you can't just tell it to memorise kifu per say. But then you could sort of… feed it kifu records, and the machine learning algorithm will begin to self-correct.'  
  
'Huh,' Shindou said. 'A self-correcting algorithm, eh?'  
  
'You don't even know how to use a mobile phone properly,' Touya said to him, sounding aghast. 'How are you interested in computer science?'  
  
'Just because I don't know how to hit a few buttons on a stupid little dingle-dangle doesn't mean that I can't appreciate _intelligent design_ ,' Shindou retorted, gazing thoughtfully at Yang Hai's desktop set-up. Computer Go that played like a person, learned like a person, and existed neatly in a box. It made something at the back of Shindou's mind itch. What was the phrase? A ghost in the machine? He bit his lip.  
  
'Do you even know what intelligent—' Touya started, but he stopped himself with a sigh.  
  
Shindou tore his gaze away from the computer and grinned at Touya, inspired. Touya blinked back at him, uncomprehending. Turning to the Chinese man, Shindou commanded Yang Hai, 'Tell me more about this learning machine thing.'  
  
'Machine learning,' muttered Isumi.  
  
'Yeah, yeah, whatever.'  
  
Shindou spent a lot of time cloistered up with Yang Hai for the rest of the trip, and then he spent the duration of the plane ride back to Japan pestering Touya about how laptops worked. Touya, who'd apparently wanted to read an honest-to-god, old fashioned _paper_ book on the flight, was not exactly pleased by his eagerness to learn. 'Shindou,' he said, 'while I'm glad that you're trying to educate yourself about computers after living your entire life in complete ignorance, does it have to be while we're on a plane with no internet connection to speak of?'  
  
'Planes don't have internet connections?' Shindou blinked. 'I thought all computers just sort of _had_ internets.'  
  
Touya opened his mouth, then shut it again very quickly and hid his face behind his book. It took him a while before he managed to speak again, but Shindou was used to Touya's weird little habits and just waited him out.  
  
'Shindou,' Touya said when he'd recovered. 'Come over to my parents' house tomorrow and I'll show you how laptops — and the _Internet_ — work.' He took out a piece of paper and a pen and wrote down the address for Shindou.  
  
'Awesome,' Shindou said, taking the paper. Huh, he'd never thought about where Touya lived before; glancing at the address, it seemed to be a pretty fancy neighbourhood. Figured.  
  
'Why are you so eager to learn, anyway?' Touya asked him, taking a sip of the tea that the stewardess had served them earlier.  
  
'Why?' Shindou blinked, shoving the paper into his pocket. For all that he was usually pretty good at picking up on things, Touya could be so obtuse sometimes; it was weird. 'How else am I going to apply for a computer science degree?'  
  
Touya spat out his drink.

* * *

  
  
After receiving Touya's brief but thorough instruction on how to work a computer, the Internet (singular), and basic browsing, Shindou found that the world was basically his oyster.  
  
'This is like cheating,' he said to the screen, sitting at a computer in Mitani-nee-san's internet cafe and flicking through what seemed to be an infinite number of kifu that people had published _and_ commented on online. 'All this time I could've just saved money on books and studied this way instead.' He redoubled his efforts and was soon the master of Google, a skill which he promptly abused by stalking Touya-sensei's old Ki-in profile and then his new Chinese stuff as well. He used some of his winnings from last year (seriously, being good at Go was _great_ ) and bought himself a laptop online, and then bullied his parents into getting an internet connection for their house. Easy stuff.  
  
The applying to a university for computer science thing, on the other hand, was all a bit more complicated than Shindou'd been expecting.  
  
'Entrance examinations?' Shindou muttered, appalled, and resolved to find another way.  
  
'Are you sure you want to study technology or whatever it is?' his mother asked him at the dinner table the night that Shindou vented to all and sundry about the difficulties of being both an amazing professional Go player and a prospective student. 'We're happy to support you, but this is all so sudden.'  
  
Shindou, thinking about Sai and the endless hours they'd spent together at internet cafes playing Go online, shook his head. 'No,' he said, more to himself than to anyone else at the table. 'It's actually pretty overdue.' He busied himself with his curry rice to avoid having to answer any more questions.

* * *

  
Touya, meanwhile, had only the vaguest of conceptions of what Shindou was up to until the day that Shindou turned up uninvited at his door and asked him how Japan Post worked.  
  
'What?' Touya asked, too taken aback by the question to remember to invite Shindou inside.  
  
'My mum's visiting my out of town grandmother and my dad's useless at this stuff,' Shindou explained, hopping back and forth impatiently. He had a thick envelope clutched in his hands. 'So you've got to help me, otherwise no one else will. I've got to get this admissions packet or whatever you call it sent in to the university by today, or I'll miss the deadline for this summer class thingamajig.'  
  
'You were serious,' Touya said, eyes widening. 'You're really going to apply to school, Shindou?'  
  
'Duh,' Shindou said, rolling his eyes. 'How else am I going to learn how to programme?'  
  
'Right,' Touya said, swallowing the hundreds of questions that were on the tip of his tongue. Golden Week was coming up, and he'd learned by this point that it was better to let Shindou do what he wanted during this time of year than to risk setting him in a funk. 'Let's go find a post office.'  
  
Three weeks later, Touya received a jubilant text message from the newly-enabled Shindou that had a string of unintelligible emojis followed simply by _I GOT IN!!!!_ The next day, Touya sat across the goban from the newly-reminted Juudan and said, numbly, 'Ogata-san, Shindou's going to university.'  
  
Ogata actually paused mid-play, his hand hovering over the board for a fraction of a second too long. Touya felt surprisingly little shame at having dropped that metaphorical bomb just as Ogata was about to move into the upper left corner.  
  
'So?' Ogata asked, having regained himself and settling back into his chair. 'There are a lot of things that Shindou does that are inexplicable.'  
  
' _University_ ,' Touya repeated. He played his next move as if on auto-pilot.  
  
'Are you worried that you aren't matriculated?' Ogata lit a cigarette and waved it in Touya's general direction. 'You can't both overachieve at the same things, Akira.'  
  
Touya thought it over for a moment, recalling when he'd turned 18 and wondered if he oughtn't try for Todai or Keio or even Waseda; he'd certainly had the grades to get in. But Touya'd never had any doubt that what he wanted to do was play Go, and by the time the entrance examinations became a question he'd been contending for Meijin -- the youngest ever to do so -- and the title matches had taken precedence over everything. Touya knew, ultimately, where he belonged, and that was behind a goban. Chewing on his words, he said, 'I am not upset that Shindou is attending university while I'm not. I learned a long time ago that juggling academics and Go at the same time is… problematic.'  
  
'For people like us,' Ogata qualified laconically.  
  
'For people like us,' Touya agreed reluctantly.  
  
'Maybe not for people like Shindou,' Ogata went on deliberately.  
  
'Shindou _is_ like us,' Touya said firmly.  
  
Ogata looked at him.  
  
'Shindou is like Shindou,' Touya conceded with a sigh. 'Maybe that's what I'm afraid of.'

 

* * *

  
  
The summer arrived, and with it a class schedule that kept Shindou occupied on what seemed to be any day that wasn't one on which he had a match or a Sunday. However busy he was with his new academic workload, though, Shindou still kept his appointments with Touya at the Go salon. Touya supposed he should be grateful that the only noticeable change he'd personally observed in Shindou was that the other boy now arrived promptly on time, and usually brought a binder of notes with him.  
  
'My professor tells me I'm “some sort of annoying idiot savant,”' Shindou reported to Touya about half a month after beginning classes. He'd apparently been accepted to a non-degree programme and was testing the waters by taking two introductory classes.  
  
'I'm not surprised,' Touya informed Shindou, but took the sting out of his words by smiling.  
  
'I had to look up what “savant” meant,' Shindou said, somewhat morosely. 'It's supposed to be like, super genius? I don't think he meant it that way.'  
  
'Are you passing your quizzes and exams?' Touya asked, unable to stop himself from being curious.  
  
'I either get near perfect scores or, like, zeroes,' Shindou sighed, toying with the cap of his goke. If nothing else, school had made his Go sharper: Shindou now played every game like it was a happy and familiar retreat from the world of arrays, null pointers, and the apparent horrors of C++. 'I don't know, Touya, some things just make _sense_ while other things just seem downright stupid. Algorithms, they make sense, but implementing them? The technical bits drive me nuts; like I fix a bug and then there's thirty new ones. Oh, hey, why did you play that there?'  
  
'White 4-18?' Touya looked at the stone he'd just played. 'It opens up the centre for my stones on the left; or it will, if you play how I think you're going to play.'  
  
'You don't normally make moves like that,' Shindou said, reaching for a notebook.  
  
'I thought we agreed,' Touya said, a little annoyed. 'No more note-taking.'  
  
'C'mon,' Shindou said, cajoling. 'We both know I'll just recreate the game at home and then bother you with questions some other time. I'm trying to design an Go-playing machine here, Touya — you could be helping me make history.'  
  
'You never used to be able to explain your own moves,' Touya said, exasperated. Time was when Shindou didn't even seem to know what a kifu was; now he bandied about words like “strategy tree” and “risk minimisation” to the salon's confused older players while sucking down can upon can of coffee and destroying them at shidougo. 'Now you want me to give you a logical explanation for every move I make? Shindou, that's not how Go works — sometimes you make intuitive choices, or guesses based on how you think your opponent is going to play. Things shift.'  
  
'But there are always _reasons,'_ Shindou said firmly, wielding pen and paper like a weapon. 'Now tell me again — why the left? Why not build here on the right?'  
  
'I'm going to kill you,' Touya said, longing for the days when he could play a full game with Shindou without an ensuing interrogation.  
  
'No, you won't,' Shindou said with supreme smugness. 'Go is a game for two players.'

 

* * *

  
  
The subsequent weeks trickled by in a predictable series of events. Shindou went slightly mad with classes, turning up to matches with or against Touya with his fingers stained with pen and highlighter ink. Ogata-san, more determined than maybe even Touya himself to his retired father's many titles, demolished the competition and earned himself the right to three challenger seats. Touya himself performed decently well in several international matches, getting through to the semi-finals in one tournament and the quarter-finals in another. He arrived back in Japan from the last competition match he had in Taiwan fully expecting his phone to be buzzing with reprisal from Shindou, but found only one message from him. It read, _exams in two weeks dying i hate school why did you let me do this also get through to the finals at least next time dammit_.  
  
Touya, wavering between concerned and amused, sent back a _Take care of yourself, and I'll try._  
  
 _yeah yeah_ , he got back. _also, raincheck for this sunday? i really need to camp out in the library. )))):_  
  
Touya raised his eyebrows at the message. He'd known Shindou to come to their Sunday sessions when down with bone-breaking flu symptoms and coughing convulsively; nothing kept him away, normally. But, Touya relented, dealing with university-level classes must surely be harder than juggling high school work. He told Shindou it was all right and went home to get unpacked.  
  
The next day Touya headed to the Ki-in, ostensibly for an interview with Shunkan Go but also to catch up with what gossip he might have missed out on while he was out of the country. Amano-san, after getting the sound bites he wanted, was more than eager to inform Touya that his rival had made himself unusually scarce.

'Normally Shindou-kun likes out of town events, so they send him on quite a few shidougo assignments with the older folks — you know the crowd — but recently he's been requesting assignments closer to Tokyo,' Amano-san reported. 'I hear from Waya-kun that he's been missing some of Morishita-sensei's classes again, too. Do you know what's got into him, Touya-kun?'  
  
'No,' Touya said, a little dismayed. 'Only that he's been attending some summer classes.'  
  
'In what?' Amano-san asked.  
  
'Computer science,' Touya said, then beat a retreat from the obviously curious reporter with a hurried, 'Excuse me, I have to make another appointment.'  
  
Fortunately, Touya bumped into Isumi and Waya later in the week during a set of coincidentally-timed matches and managed to learn more. The news from them wasn't any better.  
  
'Shindou's been coming to all his ranking matches, at least, so it's not as bad as last time,' Isumi told Touya. 'But Morishita-sensei is quite angry about his absences from study sessions.' He said the words “quite angry” but looked, to Touya's eye, like he meant “ready to murder.” Touya empathised. 'I've had to go to his house once or twice to make sure he turns up for important events,' Isumi sighed. 'I always feel bad about it after; I always seem to catch him in the middle of his books.'  
  
'He's been acting — not weird,' Waya chipped in. 'I hate to say it, but Shindou just looks plain stressed out.'  
  
'I see,' Touya said. He hesitated for a moment, then asked, 'Do you think you could tell me his address?'  
  
Waya and Isumi looked at each other.  
  
'Are you stalking Shindou?' Waya asked Touya at the same time that Isumi said, 'Of course, Touya-kun.'

 

* * *

 

  
Shindou's house was a completely normal unit in a completely normal neighbourhood. Touya, coming in from an exhibition match against Ashiwara-san and therefore in a suit and tie, felt conspicuously overdressed. He rang the doorbell, housewarming gift in hand, and was greeted by Shindou's mother. She, too, was completely typical looking; it was disorienting enough that Touya wondered briefly where Shindou got his strange intensity from.  
  
'Shindou-san,' Touya greeted her, handing over the small box of sweets that he'd brought with him. 'I'm Touya Akira; I play go with Shin— with Hikaru? I hope you don't mind me intruding; I was just around the neighbourhood and I thought I might drop by to see him.'  
  
'Oh, so _you're_ that Touya-kun!' Shindou's mother said, beckoning him in. 'I've heard a lot about you. Shindou never stops talking about your games together,' she told Touya as he toed his shoes off. 'Thank you for coming by; Shindou's been a… little bit overwhelmed by school recently. A friendly face might do him some good.' She bit her lip. It worried Touya more than anything else he'd heard so far. Recovering herself, Shindou's mother said, 'Would you like some tea? He's still at the university, but he'll be back soon.'  
  
Touya accepted a cup from her, and was then sent to wait in Shindou's room upstairs. The space was a lot neater than Touya had been expecting. Volumes of manga and Go theory sat side-by-side on a few small bookshelves, and Shindou's laptop was placed neatly on a small desk with some papers scattered next to it.  
  
The only thing that was out of place was a set of kifu papers spread out on the ground. It looked, to Touya's less than knowledgeable eye, like Shindou had been marking them up for a programming assignment. It seemed like unusually complicated work for someone who was just starting out to be doing, but Touya knew better than to think that Shindou, of all people, would do anything other than jump into the deep end. Touya also felt a flush of relief to see proof that Shindou was still studying Go and not on the verge of another period of prolonged disappearance.  
  
Touya would never normally have violated a friend's privacy, but curiosity eventually got the better of him, and he sneaked a peek at the kifu to see if he could guess the games. They weren't labelled, and so were not likely to be any well-known ones. If anything, they looked mostly like informal games or shidougo. Touya flipped quickly through two or three, then spent a while on the fourth one: a really interesting and thickly played match. Shindou had probably played all of them; besides the fact that the matches were hand-recorded in Shindou's messy writing, Touya could also recognise some of Shindou's signature moves. If so, Shindou mostly played black.  
  
White, on the other hand, looked like the work of a player of considerable skill. Some of the kifu looked old, and considering the playing level of Black must have originated from Shindou's first foray into Go: the moves weren't even numbered. Other kifu were newer, well-kept and more consistent with Shindou's later capabilities. In all of them, White always played with a pedagogical style, adapting to Shindou's weaknesses and encouraging his building strengths. Touya had really only seen play like that from his father.  
  
Was White Morishita-sensei? Something about that didn't fit for Touya; he couldn't believe it was the case. Was White Shindou's mysterious teacher? The extensiveness of the records hinted at it. The way many of the games also resembled Shuusaku's playing style— Touya felt his blood go cold. There was one other great player in recent memory who played like Shuusaku.  
  
'Sai?' he asked the empty room, fingers tightening on the kifu.

Shindou chose that moment to walk in through the door. Touya, caught, turned to face him with the kifu still clutched in his hands. 'Sai,' he repeated himself dumbly. He looked at Shindou, whose face was white as a sheet. 'Are you —' It was the wrong question to ask. Touya shut his mouth and waited for Shindou to say something.  
  
Shindou shut the door to his room very quietly. Touya knew something was wrong, because Shindou didn't try to yell at him; didn't try to snatch the kifu away. He only said, sounding exhausted, 'Touya, I told you that I'd tell you about Sai some day. Today isn't that day.'  
  
Touya forced himself to put the kifu down, smoothing the papers over where his fingers had crinkled them. 'I didn't mean to invade your privacy,' he said at last. 'But they were just laying on the ground. Are they your personal kifu?'  
  
'They're for my future machine learning algorithm,' Shindou said with a wan smile, managing to duck the question entirely. 'That is, as soon as I pass this stupid data structures exam — if I can pass it at all — and go through another 40 solid hours worth of classroom credit.'

Shindou had a haunted look on his face; in fact, he looked like he was almost in tears. Touya steered him to sit on the bed and placed his untouched mug of tea, still warm, between Shindou's hands. 'What's wrong?' he asked, feeling entirely out of his element. 'When was the last time you slept?'  
  
'Days ago? I don't know. I wish,' Shindou said, hoarse and distracted, 'I wish that I could tell you about all these kifu. I wish the whole world knew about these kifu. I wish the whole world knew how good S- Shuusaku was.'  
  
Touya could see Shindou's fingers shaking where they were curled around the mug. 'Everyone knows how good Honinbou Shuusaku was,' he said carefully, aware that he was stepping on shaky ground but not entirely sure why. Normally Shindou never spoke or even alluded to Sai or Shuusaku. It was difficult not to look away when Shindou started, silently, to cry.  
  
'No,' Shindou shook his head. 'No one knows about Shuusaku; even you don't know and I can't—.' He stopped himself, covering his eyes with the back of a hand and taking a few deep breaths. Touya, helpless, waited for him to recover. Eventually Shindou spoke again, but very quietly. 'I know I failed that exam.' Before Touya could object, he said, 'It's not an exaggeration; I barely managed to answer half the questions in the given time. I've never been good at school, and between classes and Ki-in stuff I just don't have enough _time_ any more, Touya. And this is just one class for summer school - I don't even want to think about what _real_ school might be like. I'm not clever enough or I don't have enough hours in my day or _something._ ' Shindou was struggling to get the words out, but seemed equally unable to stop now that he'd started. 'I just know I can't do this. This computer science thing while being a professional Go player thing. This machine learning, coding Shuusaku into a programme thing. I can't. I've only ever been good at Go. But my Go is the most selfish Go in the world.'  
  
'Shindou,' Touya said, because he didn't know what else he could say.  
  
'Touya,' Shindou said, putting the tea down and reaching for his goban. 'Play a Shuusaku match with me?'  
  
Instead of asking why, Touya asked, 'Which one?'  
  
It made Shindou smile, briefly. Still tearing, the other boy pulled a well-used volume of Shuusaku's matches from his shelf and passed it to Touya. 'I don't know. Pick one; any one. I have them memorised, so you can use the reference.'  
  
Touya chose the Ear Reddening Game of 1846. He knew it by heart and could keep an eye on Shindou as they played. Setting up the board and goke seemed to help him calm down.  
  
'Shuusaku was only seventeen years old when this match was play, did you know?' Shindou asked, choosing to play as the White opponent Gennan Inseki. 'Nobody thought he could win.'  
  
'I did know that,' Touya said, which earned him a faint and vulnerable glance from Shindou. 'Gennan was the head of House Inoue; everyone expected the older man to beat Shuusaku.'  
  
Shindou was silent, but he played the next moves with surety. For a long while there was nothing but the sound of Go stones hitting the board as they recreated the game together. Shindou seemed lost in thought, but eventually spoke again, faltering but sounding better than he had before. 'Shuusaku played a lot with Gennan. For the time, I mean. He was pretty good at playing Gennan, too. Won a lot. I heard— I read that he learned a lot from those matches.'  
  
Touya nodded, wondering how Shindou - far from a student of history - knew so much.

The two of them kept on placing down stones, and the match gradually began to unfurl before them. They both stopped for a moment when Touya played Black 127, the famous turning point of the game. Shindou, scratching the back of his neck in mild embarrassment, said, 'I guess my ears are already red from, you know, blubbering, so at least we're staying true to what happened when Gennan freaked out and everything.'  
  
'I believe Gennan's ears turned red from panic,' Touya said gently. 'You're not panicking.'  
  
'No,' Shindou agreed. 'I'm crying.' He stared at the board for a long while. 'Can you programme life into a computer, Touya? Recreate a lineage, just like your father and you, by creating versions of a programme? A programme that will live forever; that won't be forgotten?'  
  
Touya knew this wasn't a question of computer science. He had his suspicions, now, what it really was all about. Crazy, absurd suspicions to be having while sitting in such a normal, everyday house. But Shindou must have got his intensity from somewhere. 'Maybe,' Touya said. 'But maybe life should be left to the living.'  
  
'I wish I were more clever,' Shindou said, tears dropping onto the board between the stones. 'I think I'm going to quit school. I wish I had it in me to do— do the project I want to do justice. But I don't think I can do it without quitting Go, and what would be the point then?' he asked, rhetorically. He reached for some tissues and blew his nose, noisy and blustering. 'Do you think I'm stupid, Touya?' he asked in the wake of his admission, so quietly that Touya barely heard him.  
  
With complete honesty, Touya replied, 'Shindou, I think you are one of the best Go players in our generation.' He paused, then reached out a hand across the goban, across the completed game; across Shuusaku victorious. 'And I am sure that you had the best of all possible teachers who helped you become this way.'  
  
A long while later, Shindou reached his hand over, too.

**Author's Note:**

> You can read about the Ear Reddening Game over [here](http://senseis.xmp.net/?EarReddeningMove).


End file.
